1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data management system comprising a plurality of image forming apparatuses connected to each other via a network, and an image forming apparatus connected to another image forming apparatus via a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, there has been known an image forming apparatus designed to perform the steps of: reading image data using an image reading section, such as a scanner; storing the image data on a mass storage medium, such as a hard disk drive, in the form of a document; allowing at least one of a document code of a target document, a document creation date of the target document and targeted keywords to be entered so as to define the scope of retrieval; retrieving documents stored on the mass storage medium based on the entered scope of retrieval; and selectively displaying only a retrieved document (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 07-085239).
This image forming apparatus is intended to retrieve data stored only on its own mass storage medium, but not intended to retrieve entire data of a system comprising a plural number of the image forming apparatuses connected to each other via a network, such as LAN (Local Area Network).